Dietary inclusivity as a vulnerability-reducing service condition in hotel food services: evidence from online reviews in Central Europe
Kristína Pompurová, Radim Dolák, Eva ZabudskáPurpose
This study aims to examine how dietary inclusivity may function as a vulnerability-reducing condition in hotel food services. Drawing on consumer vulnerability theory, it considers dietary restrictions as food-related conditions that may become vulnerability-inducing when service arrangements constrain guests’ control, information, trust or access to suitable food.
Design/methodology/approach
A quantitatively led sequential mixed-methods design was applied to 88,986 non-empty textual comment fields extracted from Booking.com reviews of 20 four-star hotels in Bratislava and Prague. Computational text analysis identified food-related comment fields, and manual validation retained 439 fields referring to dietary restrictions. Descriptive statistics, chi-square tests and qualitative content analysis examined their visibility, valence and associated service conditions.
Findings
Within the analysed, self-selected corpus, dietary restriction-related content was rare but proportionally more visible in negative than in positive food-related narratives. Evaluations varied across medically grounded, lifestyle-based and religious motives. Five recurring service conditions were associated with dietary accommodation: availability, variety, staff responsiveness, labelling clarity and perceived adequacy. The findings suggest that dietary inclusivity in hotel food services is shaped by the coordination of material provision, reliable information and responsive frontline interaction.
Originality/value
This study contributes to consumer vulnerability theory by identifying concrete service conditions that may reduce or contribute to dietary vulnerability in everyday hotel food services. It positions dietary inclusivity as a dimension of service quality, trust and equitable participation and conceptualises online reviews as partial, platform-mediated accounts that may contain traces of experienced vulnerability but do not provide direct evidence of vulnerability in every case.